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Life: Distinguish between living and non-living, biotic and abiotic.
Students are given a series of things and asked to classify them as living or non-living, following which they're given notes on the characteristics of life. Students are asked to brainstorm different characteristics that could be used to classify living organisms, followed by notes on characteristics used for classification and thought examples of classification dilemmas.

Taxa: Name and give examples of the categories used to classify an organism. Identify the 7 main taxa of classification: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.
Review that organisms classified together share common characteristics, and scientists use many characteristics to classify organisms. Baggie cladistics activity. Lecture on the term taxon, and on the 7 (8) main taxonomic ranks. Finish the baggie cladistics by turning it into a cladogram, explaining that the taxa reflect the tree of life.

Tree of Life: Explain the connection between ancestry, relatedness, similarity, and classification.
Students are given a large human family tree. Compare taxa to groups of descendants, point out common ancestry, taxonomic rank size and common ancestor "distance." Primate Taxonomy Lab: Students then introduced to a real phylogenetic tree of familiar and unfamiliar primate species, and are given classification information on them. Students are asked to identify the common ancestry point for these taxa, and to figure out classification information for unfamiliar species on the tree.

Tree of Life
Discuss Primate Classification Lab.